​​​​LUBBOCK - If Texas Tech’s basketball team were ranked by
Lubbock’s housing market in the 2016 March Madness college basketball
tournament, it would make it to the Sweet 16 round.

Realtor.com and Vivid Seats, an online ticket marketplace,
released a March Madness college basketball bracket with picks based on the
most popular ZIP codes for basketball ticket sales and the strength of the tournaments
teams’ housing markets.

Vivid Seats shared sales information that was identified by
the ZIP code representing the largest number of ticket sales for each team.

Then Realtor.com made its picks using the “hotness” of each ZIP code’s housing
market, which is measured by the speed of inventory movement and Realtor.com
page views between November 2015 and February 2016.

For Texas Tech’s ranking in the bracket, the ZIP code used
is 79424, which has a 0.802 ZIP code “hotness” index and 88 percent of Realtor.com
page views in that ZIP code. Houses in that Lubbock ZIP code are selling in a
64-day time period, according to Realtor.com.

Local Realtors said Lubbock’s housing market is healthy and
ended 2015 as a seller’s market, and should continue that trend throughout
2016.

Rusty DeLoach, Realtor with RE/MAX Lubbock and Lubbock
Association of Realtors board chairman, said 2016 started the year with a
little more than 900 homes on the market in Lubbock County.

The average sales price was about $168,261 at the end of
2015, which was a 3.5 percent increase from 2014’s $162,645 average, according
to the Lubbock National Bank Economic Index report.

Home sales ended 2015 with about 3,984 homes sold in
Lubbock—a 4.8 percent increase from 2014’s 3,801 sales.

In February, Lubbock had about 31.46 percent of homes priced
at $199,999 or less, 16.10 percent of homes priced at $200,000–$499,999 and
2.44 percent priced at $500,000 or more, according to the Texas Association of
Realtors.